Fruit: A novel about a boy and his nipples

What do you get when you cross the Virgin Mary with Brooke Shields, add a trash-talking beauty queen wannabe and throw in a couple of talking nipples? One of the most laugh-out-loud books you’ll read all year.

Peter Paddington is 13, overweight, the subject of his classmates’ ridicule, and the victim of too many bad movie-of-the-week storylines. When Peter’s nipples begin speaking to him one day and inform him of their diabolical plan to expose his secret desires to the world, Peter finds himself cornered in a world that seems to have no tolerance for difference.

Peter’s only solace is “The Bedtime Movies” — perfect-world fantasies that lull him to sleep every night. But when the lines between Peter’s fantasy world and his reality begin to blur, no one is safe from the depths of Peter’s imagination — especially Peter himself.

Brian Francis has worked as a freelance writer for a variety of magazines and newspapers, including NOW and Xtra. In 2000, he was the recipient of the Emerging Author Award, presented by the Writers’ Union of Canada. He lives in Toronto. Fruit is his first novel.